Mitchell Jamie L, Fuentes-Jimenez Mia, Stone Hannah L, Yablonski Maya, Yeatman Jason D
Graduate School of Education, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
bioRxiv. 2025 Jul 27:2025.07.23.666206. doi: 10.1101/2025.07.23.666206.
Ventral Occipital Temporal Cortex (VOTC) is home to a mosaic of categorically-selective functional regions that respond to visual stimuli. Within left VOTC lies the Visual Word Form Area (VWFA) - a text-selective region that develops as an individual learns to read. While there is consistency in the general location of text-selective responses - within the posterior portion of the occipitotemporal sulcus (OTS) - there is also substantial variability across individuals in the size and precise anatomical location. Moreover, there is an ongoing debate over the extent to which the VWFA a) encodes the visual features of text, versus b) is driven by the task of reading. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we scanned adults and children as they completed two tasks while viewing text, pseudo fonts, faces, objects, limbs. Experimental tasks were: (1) a fixation task where they were instructed to ignore the stimuli while making psychophysical judgements on the fixation dot; (2) a one-back task where they were instructed to attend to the stimuli and detect repeats. We found that a consistent VWFA location could be identified on each individual's cortical surface using either task. At the same time, the response to text during the one-back task evoked a larger territory of text-selective response (leading to a larger ROI) than the fixation task. However, when averaged in template space, text-selective cortex could not be identified due to variability in the relative locations of text-, face-, object-, and limb-selective cortex. Thus, for both children and adults, a text-selective region (i.e., VWFA) can be localized on the individual cortical surface. This resulting region consistently responds to text irrespective of cognitive task, but text-selective responses are masked when averaged in template space due to variability in the exact configuration of category-selective regions.
腹侧枕颞叶皮层（VOTC）包含一系列对视觉刺激做出反应的类别选择性功能区域。在左侧VOTC内有视觉词形区（VWFA）——一个随着个体学习阅读而发展起来的文本选择性区域。虽然文本选择性反应的大致位置具有一致性——位于枕颞沟（OTS）的后部——但个体之间在大小和精确解剖位置上也存在很大差异。此外，关于VWFA在多大程度上a）编码文本的视觉特征，与b）由阅读任务驱动，一直存在争论。我们使用功能磁共振成像技术，对成年人和儿童在观看文本、伪字体、面部、物体、肢体时完成两项任务的情况进行了扫描。实验任务包括：（1）一项注视任务，要求他们在对注视点进行心理物理学判断时忽略刺激；（2）一项单后任务，要求他们关注刺激并检测重复项。我们发现，使用任何一项任务都可以在每个个体的皮质表面识别出一致的VWFA位置。同时，与注视任务相比，单后任务中对文本的反应诱发了更大范围的文本选择性反应区域（导致更大的感兴趣区域）。然而，在模板空间中进行平均时，由于文本、面部、物体和肢体选择性皮质的相对位置存在差异，无法识别出文本选择性皮质。因此，对于儿童和成年人来说，都可以在个体皮质表面定位一个文本选择性区域（即VWFA）。这个产生的区域无论认知任务如何都始终对文本做出反应，但由于类别选择性区域的确切配置存在差异，在模板空间中进行平均时，文本选择性反应会被掩盖。
